


TGTBT

by betts



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drunken Confessions, F/M, mentions of sandstorm by darude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 23:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16902066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: Bellamy Blake is Too Good To Be True. Clarke is the pile of garbage who ghosted him after their first date a couple months back. Now she's drunk and needs a ride home, and he's the only one left to call.





	TGTBT

**Author's Note:**

> This is a ficlet I posted on Tumblr last summer from the prompt: Bellarke AU + "Sometime around midnight." Normally I don't post anything on AO3 that's under 4k (weird personal rule) but since Tumblr is burning itself down, I'm starting to move all my favorite ficlets over to AO3. I revised and expanded it. Not beta'd; I apologize for any errors.

Sometime around midnight, Clarke realizes three things:

  1. She is way, way too drunk.
  2. Raven fucking  _bailed_  on her.  _Again._
  3. There is no third thing, she just likes threes.



She’s at a bar on the complete other side of town and the buses stopped running an hour ago. Specifically, she's on the floor in the handicap stall of said bar, wedged between the toilet and a cold cement wall. It's one of those bars that keeps black lights on in the bathroom to highlight the tacky neon speckled paint and intentional graffiti. Somehow, despite knowing deep in her soul that Raven would bounce the second some dude looked at her the wrong way, Clarke did not make a solid backup plan for getting home.

She has never ordered an Uber or Lyft in her life, and if she’s being honest with herself, downloading an app and signing up for it is a bit above her level right now. Her head is throbbing; she’s not at the puke stage yet but she very well could be soon.

So, she starts scrolling through her contacts looking for a ride. 

  * Wells: different state
  * Lexa: not on pain of death
  * Abby: AHAHAHAHA no
  * Jake: should probably take him out of her phone, considering he’s dead
  * Monty: probably high
  * Jasper: probably higher
  * Harper: probably asleep
  * Roan: would lecture her all night about paleo
  * Finn: fuck Finn



Which leads her, then, to Bellamy Blake, who is probably sober, awake, and nearby.

The downside is this: they met on Tinder two months ago and hooked up. It was truly, really, genuinely an amazing time. They went to a pho place he recommended and talked so long they got kicked out. Then they went to the bar next door and played a drinking game where they took turns asking each other the most personal questions they could think of, and if they weren't willing to answer, they had to take a drink. Bellamy stayed stone-cold sober. Clarke tipsied up quick. She learned about his sister (she's a junior in high school and he has custody of her), his day job (mortgage closer), his night job (inventory specialist at Kohl's), that he wants kids one day (two, maybe more), that his parents are dead (he didn't have to one-up her like that, christ), and that he prefers pancakes over waffles (almost a dealbreaker). What she didn't find out was how he got the scar on his lip, what he wants to be when he grows up, or what his favorite Hamiltontrack is. They closed down the bar and he offered to drive her home. She invited him in even though her laundry hamper had puked all over her shitty studio apartment, and her menstrual cup was floating in a cold pot of water on the stove, and she had a dildo suctioned to Aragorn's forehead on a Lord of the Rings poster. He fucked her for some reason despite all this, and he was maybe possibly (probably [actually]) the best sex of her life. He's smart! Funny! Charming! _And_ _hot as hell._ But when he texted her to ask if she wanted to go on another date, what did she do?

She ghosted him. She fucking ghosted him. Why??

Because, obviously, he was either too good for her (which, come on), or he was trying in some way to hurt her. Sure, he  _seemed_  like a good and genuine person, and she  _wanted_  to trust him, but Clarke Griffin is a firm believer of the Too Good To Be True, the TGTBT if you will, and Bellamy Blake is the  _definition_ of TGTBT. Ergo: he’s probably married or into feet or something. Not that there's anything wrong with guys who are into feet, but. Have you ever met a guy into feet who was a completely stable and functional human being? Anyway, she wasn’t going to wait around to find out what his hubris was. So she checked out.

It’s only now that she’s totally fucking tanked on the cold tile floor of a toilet stall that she realizes: her mentality might have been a little bit self-sabotaging.

Her thumb hovers over his name. "Fuck it," she says, and clicks it.

“Hello?” he says when he picks up, skeptical. But awake-sounding at least. Her heart sinks a little. It's 2018. The only people who answer their phones with Hello are ones who don't have the caller's number saved. Then again, it's 2018. No one answers calls from unknown numbers. 

It occurs to her that maybe he has a Tinder date over  _right now_  and she’s interrupting. Well, she thinks, he wouldn’t have answered if that were the case. Unless he  _would_  have answered, which means he’s either A) a dick, or B) still has a thing for her. 

She's so busy thinking that she forgets to speak.

“Hello??” he says again.

“Bellamy,” she says, trying to sound sober. She adopts, for some reason, a British accent. “Salutations. How are you this evening?”

“Fine,” he says slowly. “You?”

“Good. Great. Really, honestly very superb.”

“That’s good.”

There’s a silence wherein he’s probably expecting her to explain why she’s calling. She doesn’t, so he says, “So, uh, I don’t mean to be a dick, but who is this?”

The wave of nausea that hits her is definitely the result of the three jungle juices she drank, and not at all utter mortification, and _definitely_ not disappointment. “This is Clarke. We, you know, banged it out a couple months ago.”

“Ohh, hey, yeah.” Someone says something in the background. It sounds like a woman’s voice. Clarke hears him say, “It’s Clarke.”

“Perfect girl?” the background voice says, but Clarke probably misheard.

“Will you shut up?” He returns to the phone. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. I — nevermind. Butt dial.” She makes a series of crackling noises with her mouth and hangs up.

She lets her head fall back against the stall. The floor throbs with the beat of the music, “Sandstorm," which she hasn’t heard since 2003. Her phone vibrates in her hand. It’s Bellamy. She answers.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

She closes her eyes. Her head really does hurt. The ground is starting to spin. “My friend ditched me at this club in Polis and I need a ride home.”

“Why didn’t you just say that?”

“Because I’m an idiot. I thought you would remember me.”

“Of course I remember you. I got a new phone. My contacts didn’t transfer.”

“Oh.” 

“Send me your location. I can be there in ten minutes.”

They say goodbye properly this time. She has to squeeze one eye shut to see her phone screen steadily and send him her location. Then she finally pulls herself to standing (by grabbing the toilet bowl, gross) and avoids the cruel stares of the long line of drunk women trying to pee. She washes her hands twice, leans close to the mirror and judges her pores. Her makeup is smeared. Her hair went limp. She came to the club looking like a snack and now she's a discarded popcorn tub left on the floor at the end of the movie. Her tits look good though. Can always count on the tits. She shuffles through the packed, loud club to get to the exit. "Sandstorm" is still playing, which leads her to believe it's on repeat. She's never coming back here again. Outside, it’s fucking freezing and she doesn’t have a jacket, and she’s pretty sure her feet are blistered and bleeding from her heels. She really, really needs some water.

Bellamy pulls up to the curb in his shitty but somehow cool-looking Jetta. Before she can get to the car, he gets out and opens the passenger door for her. She wants to say, _Are you fucking kidding me,_ but her teeth are chattering too much to speak. He looks so goddamn good, so unfairly, ridiculously good: dark jeans, leather jacket, messy hair. He has a beard now, which also looks good. She tries not to imagine beard burn on her thighs. She fails, and thinks about all the noises he made while eating her out. Did she mention he likes going down? Like, the dude offered. She didn't have to ask. He asked  _her._ He said, "Can I go down on you?" and she was like, "What, I think I misheard you," so he asked again and she spread her legs. He ate her out like he was training for the pussy-eating Olympics. God she's an idiot for letting him go.

“Thanks,” she says as she climbs (falls) into the car. While he circles around to the driver's side, she lifts her hips off the seat to scoot her dress down at the hem and up at the neckline, runs a quick hand through her hair and wipes under her eyes and over her lip. 

Bellamy gets in and immediately opens the arm rest, where he pulls out a cold bottle of water and hands it to her.

“Oh my god,” she says. “I would die for you.” 

He kicks the heat up a notch higher and puts the car in gear. It's a manual, because Bellamy Blake is drives-a-stick-shift hot. “You still live at the same place?”

“Yeah,” she says, catching her breath after downing half the bottle.

They drive in silence except for some music on low volume. John Denver, of all things. Country roads taking her home or whatever. Better than Darude at least.

Clarke isn’t drunk enough to spill her emotional vulnerabilities without thought, but she is drunk enough to do it while hating herself: “I did really like you, you know.”

“I didn’t think ignoring someone was a sign of liking them.”

“I'm just a fucking mess. I’m always looking for guys who are like, overtly shitty, you know? That way all their problems are on their sleeve and it’s easier for me to, like, deal with it. But I couldn’t see any of your problems and that freaked me out.”

“I could tell you my problems, if you wanted.”

“No, I don’t — I mean you’ve obviously moved on.”

“I deleted Tinder after our date. You were the only girl I went out with.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I thought, if this is what it’s always like, getting my hopes up about finding a real connection, and it's only a hookup, well, maybe I’m not built for this century.”

“No, god, no, it was — it wasn’t just a hookup. I just. I'm not used to meeting guys like you. Usually they’re all, like, self-absorbed and bad conversationalists and never go down on me.”

He looks over at her, horrified. “They don’t go down on you?”

“No! Never. You have to date them for a long time, and even then it’s like you have to train them or something, like hey, buddy, if you go down there you'll find a craft IPA and all the love your mom denied you.” She squeezes her eyes shut and takes a deep breath. “I'm sorry I’m such a coward.”

“You’re in med school. There’s no way you’re a coward.”

“Med school is the direct result of my cowardice. It’s what my mom wanted me to do. I wanted to go to art school.”

They fall silent again. Bellamy flicks on his blinker to merge onto the highway.

Eventually he says, “So I didn’t do anything wrong?”

“If anything, you did everything right.”

“Would you want to go out again? I can try to be shittier if you want. Not pull your chair out, or offer to pay. Wait a couple hours before replying to your texts so it seems like I’m too busy for you. Turn off my read receipts so you always think I'm keeping you on read but you're not sure.”

"You keep read receipts on on purpose?" 

"Why not?"

"What if you don't feel like replying?"

"Unlike  _some_ people, I always reply."

"Oh god, you're a never-not-responder."

"What does that mean?"

"You know, like." She mimes texting with her thumbs. "Even when the conversation is completely over, you have to get the last word, so you send like a smiley face or, god forbid, 'It was nice talking to you!'"

"What, am I supposed to just end a conversation without a goodbye?"

"It's texting. There are no goodbyes anymore. We — I mean we, collectively, as a society — never stop talking to each other."

They talk through the rest of the drive, easily, comfortably, which is maybe the thing that freaked her out the most on their date, how much she wanted to tell him about herself but was afraid to. Afraid for this seemingly perfect guy to see all the garbage under her skin. Despite this, she felt immediately seen and accepted by him; she had been so used to earning attention and affection, slowly, over time, by performing and doing all the right things, making men feel good who had no interest in making her feel good in return. With others, she had to work for it, read them and pander exactly to their specifications. But Bellamy seems to like her just as she is. There's no game with him. And if there is, she's already won it.

They reach Clarke’s apartment. He puts the car in park. 

“Do you want to come inside?” she asks.

“No, you’re not sober. I'll walk to you the door though."

So he does, and when he spots her limping, he says, "Do you want me to carry you?"

She gives him a withering side-eye. "I'm fine," she says, and hits a crack on the sidewalk. Her heel slips to the side and she almost topples. He catches her, sweeps her up at the back of her knees into a bridal carry. 

"I resent this," she says, an arm around his shoulders.

"Learn to walk, princess."

She ignores how good he smells, like leather and either a light cologne or a strong shampoo. Ignores how close her face is to his. Ignores the feeling in her stomach. It's the jungle juice, she tells herself. He drops her gently to her feet in front of her apartment door. She hangs onto his jacket to get her balance. His hand is on the small of her back. When she's no longer on the verge of collapsing, she still doesn't attempt to move, and neither does he. She looks up at him and says, "Are you going to kiss me goodnight?"

She regrets it as soon as she says it, considering the sorry state of her mouth, but he doesn't seem to care, only tilts her chin up and presses his lips to hers. It's soft, sweet. Brief. He pulls away from her but lets his hand linger.

"Are you sure you won't come inside?" she asks. 

He brushes her hair away from her forehead. "I shouldn't."

“We don’t have to have sex," she says, even though it pains her. All she wants is to ride his face until she passes out. "We can just talk. Order a pizza. Cuddle, maybe.”

“Cuddle?” He sounds a little too enthusiastic. She guesses she can handle a cuddling kink. Better than feet anyway.

“Yes, cuddle. You could sleep here, if you wanted."

"And you won't be gone when I wake up?"

"It's my apartment."

"I don't know the lengths you'll go."

"I won't be gone when you wake up. I'll even make you coffee. And waffles."

He gives her a look. "Pancakes."

"Waffles."

"Fine, waffles. But we trade off on who gets to be the little spoon."

Of course he likes being the little spoon. He's TGTBT. She pulls her apartment key from where it sat buried in her bra all night, and he goes, "Doesn't it get itchy, girls keeping stuff in their bras all the time?"

"I'll show you the key print on the side of my boob," she says, and opens the door. 

**Author's Note:**

> Here is where I'd normally link my TUMBLR, but noo, Tumblr is DYING. So [sign up for my tinyletter instead](http://www.tinyletter.com/betts).


End file.
